I Don’t Like the Beatles, Either

OK, this will be short, and it is inspired by my daily dull scrolling through Google news, which yielded up this today: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8246313.stm, an article that at least recognizes that some people hate The Beatles. Now, I don’t hate The Beatles, they’re too harmless to hate. And I’m not an idiot, I understand totally what they did, and recognize their ‘importance’. But the only way i can enjoy a Beatles song is if I somehow forget that they’re The Beatles. And inevitably it is a John Lennon song, whom I love. Sir Paul no longer excites my vitriol, he’s as harmless as the band he helped to found. But I agree with the naysayers in the story linked-to above: if a band says they’re influenced by The Beatles, expect boring, cleanly crafted, innocuous pop music. No harm in that. I don’t eat Jello but I wouldn’t deny Jello to my fellow human beings.

Look, my wife loves them, and she thinks Sir Paul is Fab, and doesn’t like that John Lennon rips him one in the song How Do You Sleep (Imagine wasn’t all peace’n’love). I am a contrarian by instinct and conviction, but I believe there is an intellectual case to be made against their deification. The Boys have to be compared to the Stones, to Dylan, to the Velvet Underground and to Hendrix. In that context (and it leaves aside The Yardbirdsand the Beach Boys and the Animals, as well as James Brown, Sam Cook and a lot of others) they did some amazingly innovative things but are also, well, kinda boring. The Kinks are totally derivative of The Beatles but make much more of the same kind of material. It’s only when the Fab Four break out of their public image that they become interesting. In the early recordings they have astonishing energy and they have stripped it all down to the minimal, and primal, elements of rock’n’roll. It says, anyone can pick up a guitar, bass and drums and do it. Hooray. Out of the womb of every garage emerged a wannabee pop idol. But the hypocrisy of their image is a simultaneous creation, and it is this image that imprisoned them and is inseparable from their work. They were speed taking young guys who pissed on nuns and carried on like everyone else, but all we really get is ‘We all live in a yellow submarine’. Stack that up against ‘Stray Cat Blues’

I hear the click-clack of your feet on the stairs
I know youre no scare-eyed honey.
Therell be a feast if you just come upstairs
But its no hanging matter
Its no capital crime

I can see that youre fifteen years old
No I dont want your i.d.
You look so rest-less and youre so far from home
But its no hanging matter
Its no capital crime

Their image, who controls it, and the authorship of the songs, is a source of contention today as Sir Paul continues his silly war song with his slain Other.

So, of course, go spend 200 bucks on another complete Beatles Box if you must. Better sound? OK. I suppose this will keep happening, the marketing of The Beatles. My fist albums by them (other than A Hard Day’s Night and The Yellow Submarine, which to my 9 year old mind were of a whole with the Chipmunks and The Monkees)were the Red and Blue double albums of the seventies. They’ve never been separate from their marketing department. At least the Stones have the honesty to revel in the fact that they are a corporate endeavor not even dedicated to the hedonism that was once, long long ago, their trademark.

I love John Lennon. I like some Beatles songs. I even love a few beatles songs. Happiness Is A Warm Gun. A Day In The Life. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. Eleanor Rigby. There are others. They wrote defining, enduring, great Pop Songs and were important actors of an important time, the Piccassos, the Beethovens, the Van Gogh’s of Rock. Which only says they’re the group everyone can love and agree on. But they never wrote anything that comes close to Like A Rolling Stone. I can name dozens of Dylan songs that leave the Fab Four in tatters.

I just wouldn’t buy another bunch of Beatles Records, unless they go on sale or something (because I do like decent sound, that is, a decent digital accounting of the original analog recording). Ah fuck, let’s keep it simple, I don’t like the fucking Beatles, except for when they make me feel Bad and/or Sad. Not exactly their stock and trade.